Reclaimed pine and pecky cypress ceiling

I was approached to see if I would be able to install some tongue and groove pine boards on the ceiling of their foyer. Sure. The catch – these were all reclaimed boards that were removed as part of a renovation of a 100 year old church. Very cool. They were used as the original church flooring over a pecky cypress subfloor and had fastener holes and residual adhesive on them. While picking up the material, I spotted a few boards of pecky cypress. It looked to be enough to make crown molding for their foyer areas so we loaded that up also.

Cleaning up the pine boards

The first step was to clean up all of the boards. After scanning them with my metal detector and removing any remaining nail fragments, I ran them through the planer to remove the adhesive residue and to clean them up. With smooth faces front and back, I then ran the faces through the drum sander.

Making crown molding

Next up was the pecky cypress. After selecting a molding knife, I cut the pieces to the proper width and then set up the molding machine. The material was already at 3/4″ so I didn’t need to change the thickness. I ran the pieces through the molding machine which takes rectangular shaped boards and turns them into beautiful moldings. After the faces of the moldings were cut, I cut the back angles on my table saw.

Installation

For the installation, I screwed up a few pieces of plywood to the ceiling joists. This would give me something solid to nail into as some of the boards weren’t straight and I needed the nails to hold well so I could straighten them out. The installation went well and turned out great. With the pine done, I started on the pecky cypress crown. The clients arrived back just in time for me to fit the last piece of crown which I slid up in place and it was such a good friction fit that it stayed in place by itself. They were thoroughly impressed. I nailed off the last piece and that was it. Quite a transformation!